Lodge Hiogo & Osaka No. 498 [9]

Anti-Masonic Propaganda 1938

The following extract from the “Japanese Chronicle” published in April 1938 illustrates the type of newspaper propaganda which our Brethren in Japan had to contend with in the immediate pre-war years.

AWFUL DISCLOSURES
FURILMEISON

A Mystic Cosmopolitan Secret Guild with Centres in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe.

The Government’s Severe Struggle against the Extraordinary Persistence of the Freemasons.

Discovery of Some of the Facts ......

The secret league of Freemasons, which is an object of worldwide suspicion together with K.K.K. Association, struggling at the back of the World Revolution, and on the other is a worldwide movement of a religious league, drawing back the human race to the age of Israel. It is also said to be an association for mutual aid and for the spiritual interpretation of the word Freemason. Its true features being unknown, it is an object of fear to the human race.

Freemasonry is a great mystery, and even in Japan has a history of fifty years, and the Foreign Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Board has been searching through dark places to a dark end with no effect, but has now discovered the truth-that there are more than three hundred members, having centres in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe; and the police, with the help of their confreres in Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagasaki, &c., have made great secret endeavours, with at least a partial success. Many Japanese and Chinese are said to have joined lately, including a Japanese political leader, which has made the authorities very nervous.

MIDNIGHT MEETINGS: GUARDIANS WITH DRAWN SWORDS

Members Obedience to Orders From an Unknown Source ......

We are informed that the usual meeting place is in Yamatehonmachi, Yokohama, Asahi-cho, in Tokyo, and Nakayamate-dori 2-chome in Kobe, the meeting places having such false names as the So-and-so Club, or Marine Shan Hall.

There is a constant exchange of communications between the different halls which are guarded by men with drawn swords, the discussions proceeding at dead of night, the electric lights being extinguished and only candle-lights being used; and though the members know not whence their orders come, they obey them absolutely.

LOOKED UPON AS A DANGER

Opinion of Dr. Kono

“I have heard that there is a Freemasons’ League in Japan, but I do not know where it is or what it is doing. The Germans have much interest in it, and they are studying it, but have never studied it. There are several opinions: one is that it is a Jewish conspiracy, and that it should be feared as the Russian Revolution originated from it. Many people dread it, but I think it is wrong to regard it as dangerous, though the Jewish nature likes private leagues and movements, in which the members are all under bond. I think it is an international movement whose principle is that its affairs should not be revealed. But I know that in England the authorities thought it a danger and tried hard to check it.”

As for the membership in Japan, there is one Swiss and one German, and as for the system, though the English is the more developed, it is a mysterious thing that its membership is 70 per cent. American. Americans of Jewish descent are now to be found all over the world. The authorities therefore fear that there may be a good many American Jews among the Freemasons in Japan.

The superintendent of the Ikeda Police Station, says that when Dr. Yoshino was Chief of the Foreign Section of the Metropolitan Police Board, he solved the question thus: “It is not a question that we take seriously. However, we must regard it as important. The Russian Revolution is said to have begun with the Freemasons. The Russian Communists seem to have adopted the system of the Freemasons from 1 to 10. Furthermore, as the headquarters of the Freemasons are in Moscow, it is said that they are connected with the Russian Third International.”